The present invention relates to an apparatus for acquiring dump truck duty cycle data in a form useful for determining truck performance and severity of operation.
In large construction projects, such as the building of a highway or dam, a construction company will utilize a number of dump trucks and operate these dump trucks for long hours. In order to avoid breakdown of a dump truck and to have some indication when the dump truck should be pulled off the job for maintenance, many construction companies are anxious to measure truck activity and, more specifically, such duty cycle parameters as the hours the truck has been running, its fuel consumption, the job severity, and the productivity of the truck use, as determined by the number of loads dumped (dump cycles).
Heretofore, one method for obtaining duty cycle data of this nature has been to obtain or gather data in the form of ground speed or engine speed histograms recorded on circular graphs. However, the analysis of these circular graphs provided very limited insight into truck activity and did not provide a convenient means for maintaining summary results or for identifying deviation from normal truck operation or from normal truck productivity.
More recently, data recording instruments have been introduced which use microprocessor computer systems to obtain and to record the data in histogram form in a memory pack for subsequent interfacing with computers for analysis. One such commercially available instrument is identified as the "DATAMYTE.RTM. 400" sold by Electro General Corporation of Minnetonka, Minn. More specifically, when operated with its "457 Switchable Time at Level" Program, the "Datamyte 400" microprocessor is capable of determining whether an analog input, such as vehicle speed, is within one of 32 increments and recording the time that the signal remains in that increment in one of eight separate memories depending on the actuated combination of three external switch inputs. With a special binary coded switch cable, eight individual inputs can be separately actuated to channel the analog input to a separate memory. With other programs, the Datamyte can count events, such as the amount of closures of the three external switches.
However, in dump truck operation it is desirable not only to measure the amount of time the truck is operating at a given speed level within a given mode, such as full throttle forward, but also to measure events, especially the completion of a dump cycle when the operator raises his loaded dump body to dump the material therein.